THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION AND ITS IMPACT ON PRODUCTION EFFICIENCY

Yu. S. Nekhoroshev

(Presented by the scientific seminar of the Department of Political Economy)

In the USSR, for the first time in history, a developed socialist society has been built and is functioning successfully. As a country of mature socialism, the Soviet Union occupies a leading place in the scientific and technological revolution developing in the world. The Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU set a task of historic importance—to organically combine the achievements of the scientific and technological revolution with the advantages of the socialist economic system. These advantages, which accelerate scientific and technological development, consist in the undivided dominance of public ownership, in the planned organization of the economy, in the free creative labor of Soviet people, in the new socialist form of competition, in new incentives to labor, and so forth.

What, then, is the scientific and technological revolution, which has become a phenomenon of the twentieth century?

Marxism-Leninism understands scientific and technological progress as the ever more purposeful use by people of the laws of nature for the production of material goods. This is an objective process without which the development of civilization is impossible. Scientific and technological progress takes place on the basis of: 1) gradual quantitative changes that make it possible to improve traditional technology; 2) qualitative leaps, when technology is created on the basis of fundamentally new ideas.

Consequently, this process may be evolutionary and revolutionary. The concept of “scientific and technological progress” is broader than the concept of “scientific and technological revolution,” since the former also includes the evolutionary form of development.

There is also another understanding of the distinction between these processes, when scientific and technological progress is regarded as a form of realization of the scientific and technological revolution.

The scientific and technological revolution is an entire complex of fundamental shifts in the social productive forces, which have led to a change in the relations between science and production, to the mastery of new sources of energy, to the creation of artificial materials, and to the transfer of the management of production processes from the human being to

machine. To understand its essence it is necessary to take into account several groups of processes that are interrelated but not identical.

First. The starting point and most important condition of the scientific and technological revolution are upheavals within science itself.

What is science? It is a complex social phenomenon. There is no single interpretation of the term “science” in the world. In Western Europe it is synonymous with “knowledge,” in Holland even with “culture.” In England and the United States, science is understood in a restricted sense (the social sciences and humanities are not included). There are also many definitions in Soviet literature.

Today, in order to invest the term “science” with some definite content, its principal aspects are enumerated: 1) one of the forms of social consciousness; 2) the sum of knowledge accumulated in a definite system; 3) activity, a means of the practical transformation of the surrounding world.

Science can develop evolutionarily and by leaps. The former is characterized by extensive development through the gradual growth in the number of scientific workers and resources. In a revolutionary period, theoretical research and inventive activity come to the fore.

The revolution in the natural sciences is connected with major discoveries in the process of cognition and the use of new properties and forms of motion of matter. It is precisely these discoveries that subsequently predetermine the substance and limits of qualitative transformations of the means of labor.

For example, a sharp turning point in the development of natural science occurred at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. V. I. Lenin was perhaps the first to see the beginning of a grandiose scientific revolution. The development of electrodynamics led to the creation of the theory of relativity. Research on the theory of black-body radiation made it possible to formulate the idea of quanta. The phenomena of radioactivity were discovered.

These new discoveries did not fit within the framework of nineteenth-century physics. Representatives of the old scientific conceptions began to speak of the “disappearance of matter,” of a “crisis in physics.” V. I. Lenin very subtly grasped and substantiated the distinction between a revolution in science and a crisis in the sphere of worldview. Revolutions in science lead to the breaking down of dominant conceptions and views of the surrounding world, to a revision of old conceptions and principles. Lenin formulates the extraordinarily profound proposition of the inexhaustibility of the electron, that is, of the inexhaustibility of matter, which has been confirmed by all subsequent development of science.

The contemporary stage of the revolution in science is characterized, first, by the fact that a qualitative leap is taking place not only in physics, but also in chemistry, mathematics, biology, astronomy, and so forth; second, by the shift of the center of scientific activity to the USSR. The Japanese researcher Yuasa asserts, not without weighty grounds, that in the sixteenth century scientific activity was concentrated in Italy, in the seventeenth century in England, in the eighteenth in France, in the nineteenth in Germany, from 1920 to 1956 in the United States, and beginning in the 1950s the center of scientific activity shifted to the USSR (Pravda, 1970, October 17). Not only Yuasa, but many scientists of the world believe that the culminating point in the development of science was the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite (October 4, 1957). It was followed by a series of scientific discoveries that accelerated the pace of scientific and technological progress. It was precisely in this period that a campaign of criticism and reassessment began in the United States, leading to a noticeable increase in expenditures on scientific research. Third, the contemporary stage of the development of science is characterized by the fact that its theories and laws are acquiring ever greater practical significance. If previously discoveries,

capable of materializing economically appeared rarely, whereas now they are becoming systematic and continuous. The path between a scientific discovery and its implementation has sharply shortened. Before the First World War it amounted to about 30 years; between the First and Second World Wars—16 years; after the Second World War—on average 9 years.

It is no accident that science, in terms of employment, is beginning to approach first place among all branches and spheres of activity. In the USSR, 5–6 million people are employed in science and scientific services. This is less than in construction, transport, and trade (in the latter, 7.5 million people). In the USSR, in terms of employment, science occupies 8th place¹.

Second. In addition to revolutions in science, revolutions are taking place in technology. Technology is the means of labor created by human beings, whose purpose is to act upon the objects of labor with the help of the mechanical, physical, chemical, and other properties of things in order to obtain definite use values.

Technical development may also be evolutionary and revolutionary. The evolutionary development of technology plays an enormous role in the development of the productive forces. After all, in any given period of time the greater part of the technology in use realizes known scientific and technical ideas. Even insignificant improvements in traditional technology, because of its enormous mass, create a high economic potential. The reserves in old technological methods are great.

And in general, evolution and revolution in technology are not at all the same as in science. In science, one rejects the old conception and accepts a new one. Old technology cannot be discarded all at once.

Technology based on new principles makes its way into production in stages. And at each new stage it asserts its effectiveness. It does not succeed in doing so at every stage.

1. The emergence of a new technical principle. Here scientific, design, and technological developments are still continuing. The possibilities and paths of implementation have not yet been determined. All the more, economic efficiency is only conjectural.

2. On the basis of applying the new principle, models have been created. The possibility of technical implementation has been proved. But... industrial assimilation is still needed, and it requires large expenditures. Because of this, the new technology still competes with difficulty with the old in terms of its economic indicators.

3. Here the new technology reaches the level of economic efficiency of traditional technology. At this stage, the use of the new technology becomes economically expedient.

4. Compared with the new, the old technology becomes ineffective and leads to a slowdown in the growth of production efficiency.

The history of technology shows that considerable time passes between stages 1 and 3.

The period of ineffective development of technology is a period of experimentation. The development of progressive technology that is not yet effective today is an objective necessity. If in the past only competitive technology had been developed, we would not know much of what surrounds us today.

The fact that ineffective prototypes of new technology are being created does not testify to the wastefulness of society. Society develops ineffective technology when it has military significance or contributes—

promotes the growth of national prestige. It is therefore no accident that many fundamentally new scientific and technical achievements find practical application first in the military sphere and only later in civilian branches of production.

In the Report of the CPSU Central Committee to the 24th Party Congress it was said: “Taking into account the high scientific and technical level of the defense industry, the transfer of its experience, inventions, and discoveries to all spheres of the economy is acquiring primary importance”²).

Temporarily ineffective technology is also developed when its potential economic effectiveness in the future is evident (nuclear power under conditions in which natural energy resources are being depleted).

A technical revolution means a fundamental change in the instruments of labor, a transition to a fundamentally new stage of their development.

K. Marx regarded a technical revolution as a special stage in the dynamics of material production, entailing changes in the economic structure of society. Revolutions in technology are, in their way, the “locomotives” of material production.

The first industrial revolution in England at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries was, in essence, a technical revolution. In many production processes, human muscular energy was replaced by the power of the steam engine. The technical revolution of that period scarcely touched the object of labor. The leading role in technical creativity at that time was occupied by practitioners, not by scientists (Watt, Polzunov, Arkwright, and others).

A different matter is the electrotechnical revolution of the late nineteenth century. From that time onward (especially in chemistry and electricity) scientists took the lead. Russian scientists—Yablochkov, Popov, Tsiolkovsky, Mendeleev, Lebedev, Chernov—made an outstanding contribution to the creation of new technology.

Technical revolutions may affect individual branches or production as a whole. K. Marx wrote of a “mechanico-chemical revolution” in bleaching, calico-printing, and dyeing production, and of a revolution in cotton manufacture³). Today people write of electrotechnical, energy, and similar revolutions.

But a technical revolution in the proper sense has not a sectoral but a general character. Changes in some branches inevitably evoke a reaction in other branches. The so-called “law of diffusion” operates. Therefore attempts to exaggerate individual types of machines in the technical revolution are unjustified. Most often electronic computers are cited; their role is enormous, but it is hardly decisive.

From the standpoint of increasing the efficiency of production, technical revolutions are of tremendous significance, since their result is the creation of the most promising types of technology and processes.

If, under evolutionary development, economic efficiency accumulates gradually—and not always per unit of useful effect—then here rapid change in technical-and-economic indicators may take place. True, the larger the shift in technology, the less reliable the economic forecast proves to be. As late as the 1950s it was thought that the mass construction of nuclear power stations was a matter for the end of the twentieth century. But in 1954 the world’s first nuclear power station was built in the USSR. By January 1, 1970, about 80 nuclear power stations were operating in various countries. In the USA, a rapid growth of orders for nuclear power stations began in 1965.

²) Materials of the 24th Congress of the CPSU. Moscow, 1971, p. 46.
³) K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 23, p. 395.

In the USSR, during the Ninth Five-Year Plan, construction will be completed on nuclear power plants in Magadan Oblast, in Armenia, on the Kola Peninsula, near Leningrad, near Voronezh, and so on (“Pravda,” 1970, October 13).

Third. At the same time, profound shifts are being observed in public life, in public education, and in the system of production management.

The scientific and technological revolution is distinguished by the fact that it unites all these processes into a single whole. Such unification is taking place for the first time in the twentieth century. The scientific and technological revolution is often called “contemporary” or “new.” Such definitions suggest that similar scientific and technological revolutions occurred earlier as well. This is incorrect. The word “contemporary” should not be used, because in fact the scientific and technological revolution is taking place for the first time. In the past, revolutions occurred in various fields of science and technology, but there was no organic, direct connection among them.

J. Bernal noted: “Today’s revolution we might, apparently, more correctly call the first scientific and technological revolution” (Science in History, 1965, p. 1014). It is a different matter if one speaks of the contemporary stage of the scientific and technological revolution.

The scientific and technological revolution is a radical qualitative shift in the development of the means and objects of labor, sources of energy, technology, and the organization and management of production. The most general indicator of the development of these factors is the automation of production processes. We are still witnessing the first stage of this development, characterized by the combination of mechanization with partial automation and the beginning of the spread of fully automated systems of production management. On the threshold lies the comprehensive automation of production.

The scientific and technological revolution should not be identified with the industrial revolution. These categories differ qualitatively from one another. The first relates primarily to the productive forces and changes only the technical basis of production. The second leads to significant changes in the system of economic social relations. It is a socio-economic, not a technical, process. It leads to the creation of a material and technical basis adequate to the given socio-economic formation. The industrial revolution is accompanied by the consistent realization of the requirements of the law of correspondence between production relations and the level and character of the productive forces. It has as its starting point one or several technical revolutions, but not the reverse: not every technical change or upheaval is accompanied by a profound restructuring of production relations.

The industrial revolution should not be confused, for example, with capitalist industrialization. Industrialization results in industry becoming the main sphere of social production. The industrial revolution, however, establishes new technology in all the chief or basic branches of the country. An industrial revolution takes place only when revolutionary changes in the technology of production lead to a fundamental upheaval in all spheres of social life.

In world literature, a discussion has been going on for decades about the number of industrial revolutions in the history of society. Bourgeois and reformist studies speak of “second,” “third,” “cybernetic,” and similar industrial revolutions. In Soviet literature, the revolutionary shifts in science and technology of the twentieth century, as well as the accompanying

their social changes avoid calling it another industrial revolution. The industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is usually counterposed not to the industrial revolution of the twentieth century, but to the scientific-technological revolution of the twentieth century; that is, they adhere to the thesis of the scientific-technological revolution and of the transformation of science into a direct productive force.

The Rumanian scholar V. Roman resolutely declares the onset of a “new” industrial revolution (as distinct from the Social-Democratic “second” one). Its essence consists in fundamental changes in the way the worker is joined with the means of labor, owing to the automation and cybernetization of production, which have brought about major changes in the social structure of society. In his opinion, it will encompass the entire second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries. In the new industrial revolution two stages must be distinguished. The first (including the automation of certain production processes) is possible under the conditions of capitalism and socialism. The second can take place only in such a social system as places the achievements of the scientific-technological revolution at the service of the whole people. Only socialism creates all the scientific, technical, and material prerequisites for a new industrial revolution^4).

The scientific-technological revolution is part of the social revolution or, at the very least, is organically connected with it. The causal link between these phenomena of social life was established already by K. Marx. V. Liebknecht testifies to this in his memoirs: “...Marx mocked the victorious reaction in Europe, which imagines that the revolution has been strangled and does not realize that natural science is preparing a new revolution.” True, this connection cannot be understood as direct and immediate. Marx emphasized that the revolution in technology should not be confused with the social revolution of the proletariat. These are revolutionary upheavals of different types. Changes in technology, even the most radical ones, occur under the conditions of an already existing economic structure. Under capitalism they perfect the system of exploitation of the working people by capital. As K. Marx writes: “The greatest benefit from every progress of universal labor and of the human mind... is in most cases derived by the most insignificant and wretched representatives of money capital”^5). A revolution in the social order, however, is feasible only with the liquidation of capitalist property and the establishment of a new socialist system of production relations.

The full economic realization of the scientific-technological revolution is possible only under conditions in which public ownership of the means of production prevails. It is no accident that the victorious advance of the socialist revolution is taking place in the world simultaneously with the scientific-technological revolution. By its very essence, socialism has from the moment of its birth been connected with science and its practical use for human society.

The highest goal of social production under socialism is the fullest possible satisfaction of people’s material and cultural needs. The principal means of achieving this goal at the present stage and in the foreseeable future is the raising of the efficiency of social production.

In practical terms, the task of raising the efficiency of social production is specified in the discovery of new sources

^4) V. Roman. The Industrial Revolution in the Development of Society. Moscow, 1969, p. 118.
^5) K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, vol. 25, p. 116.

growth of production and the improvement of the population’s standard of living, as well as in the transition to new methods of planning and economic incentives in all links of the national economy, including the sphere of science and public education. The sources of economic growth may be extensive and intensive. The difference between them was formulated by K. Marx, who wrote that reproduction on an expanded scale is carried out extensively if only the field of production expands, and intensively if more effective means of production are applied².

Extensive development is not always and not everywhere ineffective development. But by the present time, at least in most branches of the economy of developed countries, and first of all in the USSR, it has ceased to satisfy growing social needs. The limits of economic growth at the expense of extensive factors are the relative rise in the cost of natural resources, the absence of free reserves of labor power, and the necessity of increasing the size and share of that part of national income which goes to nonproductive consumption.

Intensive factors of production growth have acquired decisive importance. Industry has entered a period of development in which the rates of its growth are determined to an ever-increasing degree by scientific and technological progress and by the most rapid introduction of scientific achievements into production. In all other branches of the national economy as well, it is impossible to ensure high rates of labor productivity without broadly organized scientific research and the rapid assimilation of its results in production. Only the practical use of scientific discoveries and inventions is the real cause of the growth of the productivity of social labor. It is precisely in the improvement of production, in the increase of labor productivity, that, in the final analysis, the social function of science consists.

L. I. Brezhnev, in his speech at the December (1969) Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, called the acceleration of scientific and technological progress the main way to raise the efficiency of production. And in his speech at the KhTZ on April 13, 1970, he said: “The fundamental questions of the scientific and technological revolution and of the accelerated development of science and technology will continue to be at the center of the attention of the Party and the government. This is the most important task of our economic strategy not only for the current year, but for the entire foreseeable period of the country’s development.” (Pravda, 1970, April 14).

Thanks to scientific achievements, man strengthens his mastery over nature and obtains such instruments of labor as increase man’s physical and mental capacities. The point is that, in themselves, the means of labor and technology are only one of the means of realizing scientific achievements. The simple extensive saturation with technology of certain branches of industry, without new scientific achievements, does not always ensure real shifts in labor productivity. The experience of the coal industry, and of the extractive industry in general, in recent decades shows that the development of technology and automation is not the principal and decisive factor in the growth of labor productivity. And the circumstance, as was noted at the September (1965) Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, that “the rates of growth of labor productivity in industry... have slowed somewhat in recent years,” is connected with a not entirely satisfactory process of assimilating the achievements of science, on the one hand, and with the lag of a number of scientific directions behind the demands of industry, on the other.

The same can be shown by the examples of the development of ferrous metallurgy and agriculture.

In 1961–1968, in ferrous metallurgy, the fixed-capital equipment per worker increased 1.51 times. Output per worker increased by approximately 24%. Final output per worker employed in the sector, however, after deducting the share for new capital investments and other expenditures, grew by only 2% (“Krasnoe znamya,” 1960, August 14). The reason: the development and, especially, the introduction into production of new types of rolled products are lagging behind.

Indeed, a decline in the rate of growth of labor productivity was allowed to occur despite a significant increase in its capital equipment. Thus, one may say that the rates of growth of the productivity of social labor are directly proportional to the degree to which production assimilates the achievements of science, and, to some extent, inversely proportional to the amount of equipment introduced without taking account of the latest achievements of science.

Under certain conditions, with an increase in the means of labor (but without an improvement in their properties) and the use of morally obsolete equipment, labor productivity will nevertheless grow. But this is the kind of growth that cannot create conditions for raising society’s standard of living. The reason is that the increase in labor productivity obtained solely through the use of a larger number of machines will be counterbalanced by the additional costs of manufacturing these machines.

True, mechanization can have a positive effect even with obsolete equipment in neglected areas of production. As yet there are many such areas. In industry, about half of the workers are engaged in manual labor, occupied mainly in performing auxiliary operations. But production progress is ensured above all in the main areas of production, which are largely mechanized and even automated.

On the whole, however, an acceptable growth of labor productivity is ensured only through the application of new scientific and technological achievements. It has been noted that the rate of growth of the standard of living is almost equal to the rate of scientific and technological progress.

Soviet economists, in particular G. M. Dobrov, cite data showing that 90% of the real growth of labor productivity is provided by the implementation of scientific and technological progress³.

The influence of science on the growth of efficiency is demonstrated by the following figures: in 1961 the increase in national income due to scientific and technological progress amounted to 59.5%; in 1967, to 81.0%; in 1968, to 88.2%⁴.

It is not by chance that the suggestion is being made that the era of factory industry as mankind’s principal occupation is coming to an end. Humanity stands on the threshold of a new civilization, a new economic structure of society’s life, in which scientific and exploratory activity will occupy the central place.

Only with a sharp improvement in the implementation of scientific and technological progress is it possible to carry out the program for developing the country’s productive forces outlined by the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU. The practical implementation of scientific achievements, their introduction into mass production, as was noted at the congress, is the weakest link in the chain connecting science with production. A concrete program has been outlined for accelerating scientific and technological progress and strengthening the influence of economic—

reform on the process of assimilating scientific and technological achievements. In the new five-year plans, the further development of production and the improvement of the people’s welfare will be carried out chiefly through the acceleration of scientific and technological progress. Without this, enormous capital investments would be required which, given the planned increase in the consumption fund, it would be impossible to find. There would be no material cover for them.

The special economic value of science also consists in the fact that, even if not all scientific research ensures economic growth, a considerable part of it maintains labor productivity at the level already attained.

Thus, outside science any substantial progress is now impossible. L. I. Brezhnev, at the Fourteenth Congress of the Komsomol, said: “Practically all the more or less major problems of our social development are now connected with scientific and technological progress” (Pravda, 1970, May 27).

And in the economic competition of the two world systems, science stands at the center. It may be said without exaggeration: in order to defeat the most developed capitalist countries in the sphere of material production—meaning not only scale, but also the level of equipment, technology, and labor productivity—it is necessary to achieve an advanced development of scientific thought. L. I. Brezhnev, in his speech at the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in 1969, emphasized that “we do not wish to underestimate the strength of those with whom we have to compete in the scientific and technological arena”⁵.

It is no accident, therefore, that in the modern world the development of research activity is outpacing other branches of human activity in its rate of growth. To illustrate this process, the literature on the science of science cites an enormous quantity of facts and figures, which pass from one book (or article) to another and are enumerated both in absolute terms and in comparisons. First of all, the steady growth of employment in the sphere of science is noted. The growth rates of employment in science are faster than in any branch of the economy and exceed population growth by three to four times.

Employment in Soviet science is growing still faster. Over the past fifty years it has doubled every 6–8 years. From 1928 to 1968 the number of those working in this sphere increased 33.4-fold; in industry—6.5-fold; in transport—5.7-fold; and in the national economy as a whole—7-fold⁶.

The increase of employment in science is accompanied by its becoming more expensive. Each new step in science is connected with ever larger material expenditures. A whole series of scientific experiments requires factory-scale equipment. Particularly costly is the equipment needed by the newest branches of natural science.

In this connection, countries wishing to occupy or maintain leading positions in science are compelled to allocate large financial resources for its development.

In the USSR, the average annual rate of increase in expenditures on science in 1955–1965 was about 15%; in 1965–1968, 9.2%; in 1972, more than 14.4 billion rubles were allocated for the development of science from the state budget and enterprise funds. In 1973, appropriations for science increased by 7.2% (Izvestia, 1972, December 19). The average annual rates of increase in expenditures on research and development (1950–1965)

exceeded the rates of national income by 1.85 times, of capital investment by 1.5 times, and of industrial production by 14.5 times⁷).

The growth of employment and expenditures in the sphere of science testifies to the increasing costliness of its achievements. The doubling of the number of new results of science in the past years of the twentieth century required a 15–20-fold increase in the number of people working in science and a 30–40-fold increase in appropriations (“Izvestia,” 1968, May 14). A contradiction has arisen between humanity’s interest in the accelerated development of science and the limited material possibilities for maintaining its present rates of growth. The obviousness and acuteness of this contradiction compel us to solve the problem of bringing the volume of research work into conformity with the requirements of the optimal development both of science itself and of the entire sphere of material production. The problem of increasing the efficiency of labor employed in the sphere of science has acquired particular urgency.

A. N. Kosygin said at the Twenty-Third Congress of the CPSU: “It is necessary to arrange matters so that scientific-research work, above all in the field of natural science and technology, becomes the most productive sphere of social labor. This is not simply a wish; it is an entirely realizable requirement that we must fulfill”⁸.

In September 1968 the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a special resolution “On Measures to Increase the Efficiency of the Work of Scientific Organizations and to Accelerate the Use of the Achievements of Science and Technology in the National Economy”⁹.

L. I. Brezhnev, at a meeting with voters, said: “There is no need to speak of what significance scientific and technological progress has under modern conditions. I wish only to emphasize that our country has every opportunity to win the most advanced positions in all the principal directions of the scientific and technological revolution unfolding in the world. We are obliged to realize this opportunity. In this the Party sees one of the main sources of the country’s further economic growth” (“Izvestia,” 1970, July 13).

Science has become not only a field of economic activity, but also an object of economic analysis. A new economic discipline, the “economics of science,” has emerged and is developing rapidly; “economics of research and development” has been introduced into the official nomenclature of specialties. In political economy as well, under the influence of the scientific and technological revolution, many fundamental propositions have received further development, and some established postulates have been subjected to revision. In particular, the scientific and technological revolution has substantially modified the operation of the law of the preferential growth of the first subdivision in comparison with the second. Now, for the USSR and some other industrially developed countries, the main path of economic growth is the intensification of production. The latter is accomplished through the replacement of one type of machine labor by another, more efficient type of machine labor.

The roots of the law of the preferential growth of the first subdivision must be sought not in the formula of expanded reproduction, but in technical progress, as V. I. Lenin did. Marx and Lenin proceeded from the fact that the growth of the technical composition of capital leads to the growth of the value composition, as was the case in the nineteenth century. But they allowed that the technical composition

production grows faster than value. This became characteristic of the twentieth century under the conditions of the unfolding scientific and technological revolution. The assimilation in production of the achievements of science and technology leads to a reduction in the capital intensity and material intensity of production. The efficiency of new technology grows faster than its cost. And this leads to a convergence in the growth rates of the first and second subdivisions.

The law of the preferential development of the first subdivision is manifested no longer only in the outstripping rates of development of this subdivision, but chiefly in the accelerated development of the branches that determine scientific and technological progress, in the increase of the relative weight of the electric-power and manufacturing industries as compared with the extractive industries, in the reduction of the share of production of traditional goods, and in a significant increase in the output of durable goods in the branches of the second subdivision, and so on.

Alongside economic growth, which is ensured by the assimilation of scientific and technological achievements, the scientific and technological revolution has generated a whole series of consequences and problems that are social and economic in nature.

There is still a widespread opinion that scientific and technological progress eases the problem of providing the national economy with labor power. Supposedly, the assimilation of the achievements of science and technology and the broad introduction of automation into production and management free up labor power and relieve tension in the labor balance. This is an old error. As early as the nineteenth century it was made by the economist Sismondi, the spokesman of the interests of the petty bourgeoisie. He believed that the logical culmination of mechanization would be that in England there would remain only one king, without subjects, reigning over machines. History laughed at him. At that time there were about 30 million wage workers in the world; today there are about 600 million. In reality, the more primitive technology is, the less capable it is of employing labor power. If one mentally rejects some part of the scientific achievements realized by society in recent decades, then aviation, electronics, radio engineering, and so forth would disappear, and, consequently, millions of people would lose their jobs. The scientific and technological revolution has a twofold influence on employment. On the one hand, if it does displace some part of the labor force from production, it is above all the unskilled part and only from the traditional (old) branches of material production. On the other hand, scientific and technological progress attracts additional labor power into the new branches of material production and into the sphere of services. At the same time, the demand for skilled workers increases. Serious changes are taking place in the content of labor: the center of gravity is shifting from the physical component to the mental one. This complicates occupational requirements and creates the need to improve the system of secondary and higher education. Even now the task is being set that the completion of secondary education should end with the acquisition of qualifications in complex occupations.

The economic and social significance of scientific and technological progress will continue to grow in the future. The role of science is increasing in the creation of the material and technical base of communism and in the solution of the most important social tasks of communist society.

1. Yu. S. Melechenko, S. V. Shukhardin. Lenin and Scientific-Technological Progress. Leningrad, 1969, p. 287. ↩

2. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 24, p. 193. ↩

3. G. M. Dobrov, V. N. Klimenyuk, L. P. Smirnov, A. A. Savelev. The Potential of Science. Kiev, 1969, p. 95. ↩

4. “Ekonomicheskaya gazeta,” 1969, No. 25, p. 10. ↩

5. L. I. Brezhnev, For the Strengthening of the Unity of Communists, for a New Upsurge of the Anti-Imperialist Struggle. Politizdat, 1969, p. 53. ↩

6. Ekonomicheskaya gazeta, 1967, No. 50, p. 18. ↩

7. “Ekonomicheskaya gazeta,” 1967, No. 41, p. 20. ↩

8. “Materials of the Twenty-Third Congress of the CPSU,” Politizdat, 1966, p. 165. ↩

9. SP USSR, 1968, No. 18, p. 122. ↩